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Contributor guidelines

Today, business leaders are being asked to make business and technical decisions about IoT and the Connected World. But there is no resource where they can go to read the stories and join the conversation about what is coming next.

The ReadWrite Mission

ReadWrite is the leading media platform dedicated to IoT and the Connected World. We work with the industry’s top technologies, thinkers, and companies to tell the stories that drive this world forward. We strive on a daily basis to answer the critical questions on your minds – about the data, privacy, security, and platform issues, and how all these ecosystems come together for you. Our content lives at the intersection of entrepreneurs and enterprise, the birthplace of these new technologies that will impact every industry they touch.

Our Focus

We cover IoT and the Connected World…exclusively

We cover new topics that no one has covered or even thought of yet

We also cover existing topics, but with a new angle or insight

We are provocative, but backed by data and rigor

We are controversial and sometimes combative, but always driving towards a conclusion

Why does someone need to read this (in other words, did we answer a question)

Not Our Focus

We don’t cover apps (RARE exception: An app that has connected a whole of new things into a community…which probably means it’s not really an app story, right?)

We cover AR (as a great interface topic) but not VR (see “games” above)

ReadWrite Guest Author Guidelines

ReadWrite is seeking guest contributors to enhance our relevant content with current, valuable information about topics like transport, smart cities, fintech, connected devices, industrial, health and more. All content shared is intended to assist our community of readers understand today’s technology, including how to invest in, apply, and benefit from it.

We welcome high-quality guest contributions from experts who fit our content style. The content should attract those founders and inventors who are building the disruptive technologies and bringing those solutions to the masses around the world.

HOW TO ANNOY US

We get a lot of emails. But so does everyone, you might say, they’re free. Just delete them.

Deleting them is not free. It’s time-consuming. And the irritation it causes is fungible. Our colleagues don’t like us to be irritated. Then we do things like take the last cup of coffee and not refill the machine. And so on.

So, help us to help you help them.

We shouldn’t have to say it, but…if you send us an inappropriate pitch (by which, we mean something we clearly do not NOT focus on as a subject), it will be ignored and deleted. Yes, we understand everyone has a client who “kind of” fits in one of our areas of focus. Spam is in the eye of the beholder. But that’s our call. We know inappropriate when we see it.

Your follow-up email asking us if we’ve had a chance to read your inappropriate pitch? Also deleted.
Ask us again, and we might just have a guy swing past your place to explain some things.

At best, you can expect us to have a bot at some point that will ask you to re-read these guidelines — like what you’d get if you furiously pressed 00000000 in the automated phone system of a large corporation.

The Internet of Things is a hot buzzphrase right now, but inserting it into a non-IoT pitch will not magically get our attention. In fact, it may garner our scorn, or perhaps even public ridicule.

And clearly anything biased – racially, religiously, whateverly — will be terminated with prejudice. Ironic, in a way. Now you know how whoever you slighted feels.

So, are we good? Good. Let’s hug it out.

Write and Submit Your Author Bio/Profile

When you establish an author profile with us, please include the following information:

Biographical information, which will be attached to every post that is published on ReadWrite. This should be a short and sweet “tweet” type bio of who you are and why you’re important. We like to limit this to 200 characters.

Twitter profile. This allows us to tag you online so that you can share your post.

LinkedIn profile. This helps readers see your expertise, background, and credentials as well as connect with you.

Your other social media accounts, such as Facebook, Instagram, Medium, YouTube, etc.

Your personal website or company name along with role and URL.

A 200 x 200 profile photograph – This will be setup through Gravatar. Here is a step-by-step guide to setting up a Gravatar picture. This will also show up on any other WordPress site out there with this email.

Blog Post Lengths

We like to have posts that range from 1,300 to 3,000 words. Preferably, we aim for 2,000-3,000 words.

Longer blog post lengths provide more relevant information that readers can use and helps bring them back to read more on our site.

Longer, in-depth posts are also more likely to be picked up by some of our media partners.

Citations, Links, and Relationships

Please have the first two links in every post point to relevant internal ReadWrite content that relates to your topic.

Use external links for any third-party perspectives, evidence, and statistics.

Only use credible sources, including research studies and major publications. Do not use Wikipedia.

Disclose the nature of any relationship with a company or person that is mentioned in your content.

If your post is a non-sponsored, non-affiliated product review, there needs to be a disclosure included at the top and bottom of the post.

If you use a quote within an article, you may only link to their Twitter handle unless previously approved by our editorial staff.

Please do not overly self-promote your own business if you include it in any of your content. We will remove anything that we deem too promotional.

Our editorial staff reserves to right to add rel=”nofollow” to any link or remove a link attached to words or images before or after publication

Do not link to any questionable sources or industries, such as pharmaceuticals, casinos, payday loans, or pornography.

Buying, selling, or trading links that appear in posts is strictly prohibited.

SEO Best Practices

HTML formatting related to bulleted lists, headers, bolding, etc.

1 WordPress category

Shortened titles in the meta title section

Alt tags for any images used in the blog post

Formatting

Write out numbers from 1, 2, 3, etc.

Write percentages as digits.

Use one space after all punctuation.

Use the Oxford comma format.

Capitalize first and last words in headings. All other words are capitalized in a heading except articles (an, a, the, etc.), coordinating conjunctions (for, and, or, but, etc.), and prepositions that contain three or fewer letters (in, one, at, etc.).

Headers in H2 tags and sub-headers in H3 and H4 tags.

No spam or div tags

Images

A featured image should be least 650 pixels wide and 400 pixels tall. Make sure that the featured image appears correctly before submitting your post.

Use center alignment for photos within the blog post unless they are aligned with text.

Set the display size for all images to “large.”

Upload at least one image per blog post and place it within the first approximately 150 words.

If you want to include images, please also share them via an online service (Flickr, Dropbox, etc.) and include the link. You can use your own images, but please note that. Note the source if you are using an image from a photo licensing service like AP, Getty, or Shutterstock. Also, include the name and email address of your representative so we can verify that you have rights to the image. You are solely responsible for obtaining these rights. By submitting a post, you represent and warrant to ReadWrite that you have done so.

All images must have alt tags and title attributes. Use the title of the post or a brief photo description.

Do not use charts, graphs, or illustrations from other websites unless our editorial staff has approved it.

We do not accept any images that have a brand, logo, or external links displayed on them. There should not be any branded images that may appear to make the post into sponsored content.

If the editorial staff has requested that you make changes, it will go on Editorial Hold. Your post will be published faster if you quickly respond and make the required changes. If you see “Editor Hold” on your post’s status but have not received an email with requested changes, please contact us.

Once all editorial changes are completed, your post will be changed to “Ready for Publishing” status. Typically, each post involves a two to four week turnaround from post submission to publication.

Follow Us Everywhere

First, if you have not already done so, please make yourself an account with each of the follow spaces on social media:

ENOUGH ABOUT US…WHO ARE YOU?

If you are an agent (PR, media relations, good friend, sly frenemy) submitting on behalf of your client and it will be a one-off submission for publication, you should submit through the same process.

If you’re a freelance writer interested in ongoing work, or a guest poster looking to talk to our audience on an on-going basis, you’ll need a ReadWrite/WordPress profile. It’s free and critical if we’re going to be working together a lot

Once you submit, a ReadWrite editor will look at the post for content, grammar, etc, and they will make the determination to publish it. The ReadWrite team alone maintains final editorial control.

As with our comments on inappropriate pitches to ReadWrite – whether in terms of subject matter, writing style or bias – any posts submitted not matching our content guidelines will be deleted.

We’re very busy, so you may never find out why we didn’t ultimately take the submission, but generally, if it hasn’t been published within two weeks (unless there are some kind of timelines for release of the information in the post) it’s probably not going to be posted.

Our Content Verticals

If you’re a freelance writer looking to pitch us story ideas or a PR/media relations person with a press release (again, see our note about spamming, above) please familiarize yourself with ReadWrite and its verticals.

We deliver our mission to our audience with a tailored set of content verticals designed to engage our readers, foster conversation, and drive community.

These verticals are:

API – From software to enterprise to startup interfaces, the API vertical is the source for all the exciting and innovative data applications of IoT.

AR/VR – From hardware to software, AR/VR is attempting to transform the world as you see it, experience it, and know it.

To participate in our guest contributor publishing program, we have established a set of guidelines listed below.

Content Republishing

To maximize the search ranking potential, there should be no duplicate content issues.

Content can only be republished on Medium. You may not republish content from our site on your company or personal site until two weeks after being live on our site.

If we see a post published anywhere besides our site or your company or personal site, then we may remove your post from our site.

Other Notes on Our Guest Post Opportunity

We don’t guarantee to publish your submission, but we will review it and make a yes/no decision on publication. Because of the high volume of submissions, we’re not able to give timetables on review or feedback beyond an acceptance or rejection. Please don’t email us to ask about the status of your submission because this leads to further delays.

We reserve the right to edit the post as needed for style, content, length, etc. Our policy is to give guest authors a chance to review our edits before posting when possible, but ReadWrite retains final editorial control.

By submitting a post to us, you are affirming that the content is original to you, the author, and has not appeared elsewhere online or in print. We may accept previously published material. If this is the case, please state where and when it ran when you submit your post.

We don’t pay for guest posts.

Benefits of Guest Posts with ReadWrite

Here are some of the benefits of providing us with high-quality, relevant content:

Author Bio on the ReadWrite website

Exposure to millions of readers that could be your target audience.

Syndication relationships with a wide range of media companies

Followed by ReadWrite Twitter account

If this all sounds good, then we look forward to receiving your submissions. We look forward to working with you. Apply to become a contributor here.